"Let us not invoke the unimaginable," Georges Didi-Huberman argues in Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, where he suggests that we are both obliged and indebted to images of suffering, that we are "trustees, charged with sustaining them simply by looking at them."

Few phenomena are as formative for our experience of the visual world as displays of suffering. While graphic representations of pain may have the power to traumatize the viewer, there is a difference between disturbing images and images that disturb. The latter hone our ethical proficiency in that they implement a liturgy of looking which tests our moral experience by transgressing or enlarging it.

In this roundtable discussion we intend to address some of the central and recurring questions of the conference in a format that is somewhat less restrictive than the panel discussions: Is there an iconology of pain? And moreover, what is it about the current climate of images that would suggest such a question in the first place? In a time when the institutionalized discourse of power and the rhetoric of the mass media sanitize the reality of suffering, perhaps what is needed is a new critical conceptology that is able to resist the euphemisms so endemic to the vocabulary of political hegemonies?

Jose Fonseca Hidalgo (University of Bergen)Blood, Sweat and Tears: A Look at Opposite Functions of Pain in Fiction Film Narrative

Chair: Tonje Sørensen

About the presentationsPanelist have thirty minutes at their disposal - this includes the Q&A session. We have many speakers on the programme, so we kindly ask you to honor the format of the panels by timing your talk in accordance with the time stipulated.

Registration

To register for the conference, send an email to Gjartrud Kolås at gjartrud.kolas@infomedia.uib.no before May 1. The registration fee is NKR 500 and includes four meals (lunch and dinner Friday and Saturday). Once you have registered, information about the payment procedure will be forthcoming. Please let us know if you have any special dietary needs, and notify us at least one week prior to the event if you intend to skip some of the meals.